Winter of Discontent: As Justin Trudeau’s approval deteriorates, can his rivals make gains? - 19 Dec 18For the first time since October 2015, someone other than Trudeau is seen as best PM

December 19, 2018 – At the end of what has been a challenging and at times chaotic year across the federal political landscape, Canadian approval of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to decline.

With less than a year before an expected election, the number of people who favour Trudeau has fallen to 35 per cent, down from 46 per cent this time a year ago.

For the first time since October 2015, he is no longer seen as the national party leader who would be the best prime minister. That mantle now narrowly rests with Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leader Andrew Scheer (33% prefer Scheer; 27% Trudeau), although many say they don’t know just who would be ideal in the top job (26%).

Underlying the downward shift in the PM’s approval is a tumultuous twelve months that saw his government face criticism for its handling of a number of key files, including pipelines, trade negotiations, and irregular border crossings.

More Key Findings:

- Asked to name the top issue facing the country today, Canadians are most likely to say it is “the deficit/government spending” (28% do, compared to 21% each for the economy, environment/pollution, and health care)

- Younger Canadians, who were outliers in their majority approval of Trudeau until now, appear to have lost some Liberal love. The Prime Minister’s approval drops to 42 per cent among 18-34-year-olds, from 56 per cent last year at this time

My firm belief is that in Canada politicians only lose elections; they don't win them.

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As I see it, the closer we get to an election, the louder Mad Max will become. He will end up splitting the right vote which will result in, at a minimum, a Liberal minority government.

I’m not convinced... he’s struggling make headway, and crazies are flocking to him. He may have an impact on a few seats, but I doubt it will be enough to fundamentally sway the election. I could be wrong.

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Pacificsm is doctrine fostered by a delusional minority and by the media, which holds forth the proposition it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

I’m not convinced... he’s struggling make headway, and crazies are flocking to him. He may have an impact on a few seats, but I doubt it will be enough to fundamentally sway the election. I could be wrong.

I was thinking more of the Liberals using him to drive "big C" conservatives away from Scheer by portraying Scheer as "liberal lite".

Yes they are, but the long term trend is somewhat more revealing. In virtually ever region, the Liberals are on a downwards trajectory, Quebec being a possible exception.

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WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may create the illusion that you are tougher,smarter, faster and better looking than most people.Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. (H.L. Mencken 1919)Zero tolerance is the politics of the lazy. All it requires is that you do nothing and ban everything.

As I see it, the closer we get to an election, the louder Mad Max will become. He will end up splitting the right vote which will result in, at a minimum, a Liberal minority government.

I've been following some other forums about Bernier. He appears to have a small following that doesnt seem to be expanding much. He appears to be having trouble coalescing his.message and platform. People are already returning to the conservatives. Just what I've read.

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Corruption in politics doesn't scare me.What scares me is how comfortable people are doing nothing about it.

I've been following some other forums about Bernier. He appears to have a small following that doesnt seem to be expanding much. He appears to be having trouble coalescing his.message and platform. People are already returning to the conservatives. Just what I've read.

Canada is not a Libertarian country. Bernier will never have more than a small following because most non-political Canadians love our social safety net and public healthcare system. I suspect most of his policies will be a non-starter for mainstream Canada, and the only chance he had of getting more of the free market policies he likes put into practice would have been as a member of a Conservative government cabinet. Instead, he took his toys and went home, and now he'll poll around the levels of the Green Party and be a political sideshow in the Commons whenever a journalist wants to trot out the "fractured Conservative party" meme to sell a few papers.

I've been following some other forums about Bernier. He appears to have a small following that doesnt seem to be expanding much. He appears to be having trouble coalescing his.message and platform. People are already returning to the conservatives. Just what I've read.

Yup....this will go far.......

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Bernier's party taps anti-'trans agenda' activist as candidate in Burnaby-South

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will have a bad night Tuesday, when U.S. President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union speech before Congress. Trump has done just about everything right on the economy, Trudeau just about everything wrong, and the contrast will be cringe-worthy.

Trump will doubtless brag about America’s red hot economy, which took off the day after he was elected president in November 2016. Business confidence instantly soared upon the realization that companies would soon be able to shed the immense drag of Obama’s politically correct interventions. The stock market soared along with it, investment surged and employment boomed. The U.S. now boasts an unemployment rate below four per cent that includes rates not seen in decades, or ever, for blacks, Hispanics and women. So many people are entering the workforce to seize the well-paying jobs on offer that the workforce-participation rate is up while the numbers of those on disability and food stamps are down.

Employers are so desperate for help in America’s tight labour market that they are adapting their workplaces to accommodate those with physical and mental disabilities and are even giving a second chance to those with criminal records.

In Canada, despite the booming U.S. economy next door, our unemployment rate remains mired at 5.6 per cent, almost 50-per-cent higher than America’s. With our industries burdened by Trudeau’s Obama-style interventions — those tied to gender-equality and climate among them — and failing to generate the good jobs seen south of the border, our labour force is shrinking as wages struggle to keep pace with inflation. Investors in Canadian firms are suffering, too — since Trump’s election, the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared more than six times that of the S&P/TSX Composite Index.

What was once America’s single biggest economic and geopolitical weakness — its energy dependence on oftenunsavoury foreign suppliers — has vanished, with America’s energy ascent an American triumph. By unshackling energy development, Trump has made America the world’s largest oil and gas producer, not only selfsufficient and secure domestically but able to undercut enemies such as Russia and Iran by eroding their markets, diminishing their incomes and undermining their relevance.

What was once Canada’s single biggest economic and geopolitical strength — our energy industry — has also vanished, to become our single-biggest shame. By shackling pipelines and otherwise demonizing fossil fuels, Trudeau has neutered Canada’s largest export earners and most strategic industries, diminishing Canada’s economic clout and political relevance to the U.S. and thus inevitably to the international community.

Before Trump came to power, the conventional wisdom among the world’s elites had two-per-cent GDP growth as the new normal for developed economies, with Obama averaging just 1.65 per cent. The Trump economy has blown that conventional wisdom away. In 2018, U.S. GDP growth is estimated to come in at three per cent, 50-per-cent above Canada’s two per cent, which will more resemble the old Obama normal.

Another pre-Trump conventional wisdom had manufacturing jobs gone for good. The Trump economy blew that away, too, with 284,000 manufacturing jobs created in 2018, mainly on the strength of cuts to taxes and red tape. In Canada, where taxes rise and red tape binds, manufacturing jobs are stagnant.

Trudeau’s bad night Tuesday will have one wry consolation, however: Trump makes Trudeau look bad, but he also makes Trudeau look better than he deserves. Without the Trump gang buster economy, which has buoyed the Canadian economy to make ours look passable, the Canadian economy would be in clear decline. With Trudeau’s Canada having become one of the OECD’s highest corporate income tax jurisdictions, with our high marginal personal income tax rates certain to discourage the best and brightest from immigrating here and with investment leaving Canada, our economy’s plight will soon enough become widely evident to Canadians. How soon is the big worry for Trudeau. He needs the Trump train to keep barrelling and to keep propping up Canada’s economy at least until the fall, when he faces voters in a general election.

It seems that the Liberals problems have not gone unnoticed south of the border.

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Trump’s Canadian counterpart takes a hit

By ALEXANDER PANETTA

02/13/2019 07:24 PM EST

OTTAWA — A political scandal is threatening to spoil Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s date with a second term.

Trudeau, cast as a progressive golden boy and viewed internationally as a natural counterweight to President Donald Trump, now finds himself embroiled in a fast-spiraling series of events related to an alleged push to drop corruption charges against a major engineering company.

Trudeau’s inner circle is accused of pressing Jody Wilson-Raybould, Canada’s former justice minister and attorney general, to offer a Quebec company a settlement deal over charges that it bribed Libya’s former Gaddafi regime. She was then demoted to Veterans Affairs' minister, criticized in the press and this week resigned.

How ugly has it gotten? Wilson-Raybould announced in her resignation letter that she’s hired a lawyer — a retired Supreme Court justice, no less — who she will consult before she comments on the affair publicly.

Ahead of this week, Trudeau had a small lead in the polls — one prominent pollster had his party up four points. Liberals' main fear until now had been losing a few seats in Parliament and seeing Trudeau’s second-term agenda stymied by a hostile legislature.

Now it’s fretting about starker setbacks.

There’s already an ethics inquiry underway. A parliamentary probe is next. Trudeau’s allies agreed to the probe Tuesday, but fought feverishly to limit its scope.

There’s no indication these events will turn into a full-blown legal threat: Analysts who have weighed in have mixed opinions on whether the events described could be called criminal obstruction.

And Trudeau said he never pressed anyone into offering a plea deal to SNC-Lavalin, a generations-old employer in the prime minister’s hometown of Montreal, which faces a serious threat over charges of corruption in Gaddafi’s Libya.

“[I am] both surprised and disappointed by her decision," the prime minister said of Wilson-Raybould's resignation from the Cabinet, which followed a demotion.

The political scandal threatens to affect basic tenets of his agenda for governing Canada.

Trudeau has a mixed record on keeping his promises: Some he’s achieved, such as a tax credit designed to reduce poverty. Others he has completely abandoned, including a promise to reform the election system. But two of Trudeau’s most important promises remain a work in progress and could be washed out by the scandal's ripples. One is better relations with Canada’s Indigenous people, a high enough priority that Trudeau devoted a U.N. General Assembly speech to it. The other is building a new pipeline through British Columbia to get Canada’s land-locked oil to international markets.

The mess has Trudeau fighting with the Indigenous leadership in the very province where he wants to build a pipeline, British Columbia, and he needs formal consent from aboriginal people to do it.

B.C. chiefs excoriated Trudeau over the affair in aggressive language in a public letter.

The reason it’s so personal: The minister at the center of the storm, Wilson-Raybould, is an Indigenous trailblazer. She was the first aboriginal woman to hold this prestigious cabinet post in Canada — and she underscored that personal point by signing her resignation letter in her Kwak'wala name: Puglaas.

That translates to daughter of noble people.

Her father, Bill Wilson, indeed has clout. He’s a well-known hereditary chief who used to spar with Trudeau’s father, a former prime minister. In one such session, Wilson told Pierre Trudeau about his daughter Jody’s big dreams.

Now the younger Trudeau is feeling the ire of the elder Wilson, who blasted the Liberal government, saying it has no business taking credit for recent improvements for Indigenous Canadians.

“It’s make-believe, cosmetic baloney that Trudeau’s engaged in. It’s proven itself now to be a farce,” Wilson told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation this week. “The Liberals are slightly better [than the opposition Conservatives]... [But] I have no faith whatsoever — not that I ever did — in the white man’s government.”

What Indigenous people want, he said, is real control over resources, land and pipelines.

That’s where Trudeau's pipeline problem comes in.

The prime minister is so desperate to build one he shelled out C$4.5 billion for the public takeover of a project that has no guarantee of success. It’s central to the grand bargain Trudeau offered Canadian voters in 2015: Trudeau promised that if Canadians accepted a tax on carbon emissions, that would buy the environmental goodwill to get some pipelines built.

The carbon tax happened. The pipelines haven’t.

Wilson has made his fierce opposition clear in a series of Facebook posts.

So now Liberals are starting to sweat about the election.

Expect an awkward meeting next week when the prime minister hosts the next gathering of his Liberal caucus. Wilson-Raybould remains part of that caucus.

One parliamentary staffer in Trudeau’s party said he expects lots of venting against the perceived shortcomings of the prime minister’s entourage, though he expects any internal rebellion to fall well short of the toxic wars that nearly destroyed the Liberal party in the early 2000s.

The “caucus will stay together for now,” the staffer said. “Sometimes these types of crises can bring caucus members together.”

One sign the damage to Trudeau could be contained: The woman most often touted by Liberals as a possible leadership successor to him, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, said she’s still squarely supportive of the boss.

I sure hope you don't mean knocking on doors the way you did it in the Sandbox.

Anyone willing to suggest the return of Belinda?

Jesus Christ, good god no!!!

Once again, (getting back to Trudeau) any man that goes on and on about being a feminist, Trudeau and his henchpeople in the PMO's actions and words of the past week goes to show that they are actually the worst sort of chauvinist pig!

Something that amuses me: the number of articles I've read in the past couple of years, written by women claiming to be (various kinds of) feminists, in which they explain why they distrust men-who-claim-to-be-feminists. (Words and phrases like deceitful, opportunistic, wanting-to-get-laid, etc are used.)